by Jean Giono
All at the same time, and I really don’t have any. At five o’clock, another call from Meyerowitz, anxious, panic-stricken, lost, he received a telegram from the B.’s, he has the key, he’s going to the A.’s house, they’ll give him room and board. He’s upset. But this is the hour when I must bring the rabbits in and while he’s on the phone it’s getting dark, and I tell him to hurry up. He tells me he doesn’t like that. I go fetch the rabbits. The grass that Barbara brought is wet. I go to pick a few cabbage leaves and for each cage I add some thyme and a handful of barley. At first I see only two hens, but the third is hidden in the egg trough. I return out of remorse and give extra rations to the mother rabbits with babies bunnies. They are calm around me and sniff my hands. They are very hungry. Since Ch. left, I’m in charge of gathering grass for them, cutting wood in the morning, and looking after the farmyard. Not a minute to work today.
Henry is sick. Élise just came from his house. He had telephoned. It seems he has a horrible boil on his little toe. His leg is swollen up to the knee, and black. The doctor advised squeezing the boil to drain the puss. Henry’s wife doesn’t dare. I’ll go tomorrow morning. Very afraid that this could be bad for him, at his age and with serious diabetes. Henry is Jourdan of Colline and Janet of Colline was his father-in-law, Jean Pic, known as Janet. It was witnessing the long agony of Janet’s alcoholism that gave me the idea for writing Colline. I listened patiently to Janet’s ramblings. I kept him company, he used to say. It was in the early days of my marriage. Henry has known Élise since her birth and used to bounce her on his knee. Élise just told him that he was expected here for Christmas, that there might be a turkey. He told her, “I’ll make crutches and be there.”
Last night I dreamed about Lucien Jacques. How stupid! Me, too!
November 29
Anatole France’s revival awaits the end of the war. Although it may apparently tend toward revolutionary extremes, that period will be radical socialist at its core. Radical-socialism is the purest expression of all that revolutions become. The tadpole loses its tail, the Jacobin loses his guillotine, it’s the law of evolution, and thus we have radical socialism. Russia is radical socialist at present; only the eastern part.
Meyerowitz telephones at ten. Everything’s going very well, it seems.
Charles’s tasks are gradually becoming part of my own work. Gave the rabbits their food and lovely grass. They are friendly and delightful. I already know their habits, cage by cage. The hens are a bit more difficult. After that, I split the wood for the day and eventually came up here where my beautiful Javanese stained glass produces a delicate amber light and immediately I have clarity for work. Last evening, after all the problems, I was able to clear one long hour of calm (understood in flashes the calm of Mipam at the Ngarong monastery). I had arranged the Apocalypse de saint Sever under my lamp; an immense calm issued from the large folio format. The massiveness plays a very important role. With each turn of the enormous pages, the eye receives the impression of a giant portion of food being offered to it. Even without reading. If, in addition, there is Froissart or Ariosto or the wonderful images of the Apocalypse, then gradually the cloister burrows into itself like a conch, surrounded by its galleries, forests, precipices, and mountains.
November 30
This evening, a desperate call from Meyerowitz. He went to Forcalquier. According to what I could understand of what he told me in veiled terms, he’s especially high on the wanted list. He’s even afraid that he will be picked up at Vachères. The Auréases don’t seem to have greeted him with tears of joy, and I understand that. But now all I can do is give him advice, and what should I tell him? Stay at V. and go into hiding if necessary? That’s what a man would do.
Once again, major money worries that keep me awake at night. My taxes are coming due. I’m going to find myself stripped bare facing a payment of 80,000 francs to the tax department. On the other hand, the business with Ch. is sorted out, for the time being.
December 1
“…joyfully fleeing a vile country.” (Baudelaire)
I’m reading an excerpt from Scènes de la vie future in an old Revue de Paris. Could it be that Duhamel is a great man?
Last evening, four phone calls, one after another, from Meyerowitz. I don’t know. He must already stand out like a green monkey at Vachères. Finally he announced that he was coming to see me this morning. But he wanted to come as early as possible. “But what time?” “Seven.” “That’s when I split wood and afterwards I feed the rabbits.” “I’ll wait for you in the library.” “Yes, but it’ll take me two hours.” “It’ll take you two hours to do that?” “Yes, because I enjoy it.” “Giono! Could you try not to enjoy it tomorrow morning?!” (Is this the tone of a desperate man? Is there the least sincerity in it? Does it ring true and clear? No.) I answer, “I forgot to tell you that I use the bathroom during those two hours as well.” “Okay, “he says, “then I’ll come at ten o’clock, that’ll be fine.”
Meyerowitz arrives, touches my cheek lightly with his finger to see if I’ve shaved, he tells me a long story about sleeping standing up, pushed around by two giant, crude and vindictive soldiers, he asks me for money, he asks me for fats, he asks me what on earth he’s supposed to do at Vachères, and where will he go if they track him down at Vachères, and what he’s supposed to do without a piano, he asks me for a letter of reference for M. de Lombardon, he asks to borrow my favorite books (which I flatly refuse him). I get a phone call. I leave him alone for a moment. When I come back, he’s kneeling in front of the bookcase where I keep all the books I love and he’s pawing through them and he says, “Can I take this one?” I tell him no. The phone again, again I come back, he’s rummaging through them. Nothing to be done this time, he leaves with La Passion du Palatinus.
December 2
Ch. returned last evening. The danger is not yet passed and threatens him at every turn. An inspector from the Les Mées camp came to warn me that M. is also facing real dangers.
December 3
Bombing in Toulon, 600 dead, and yesterday, bombing in Marseille, 50 dead. A young boy, eleven years old, arrived here from Toulon. He doesn’t speak anymore. He trembles. He’s lost the use of all his senses and is left with only the sense of fear. M. Y. came to ask us for Mémé’s rooms for his daughter and his wife. Apart from this instinct for self-preservation, M. Y. has little more reason than a drum, he rumbles when he’s beaten and you can make him rumble as you like. He rumbles the call to arms just as well as the retreat, and you can even get funny farting noises out of him.
There’s a film to be made out of the story of Jeanne de Buis who appears in chiaroscuro in the Virgile that I’m writing. Very easy to do. In color (the slaughterhouse) but I see it all entirely as night. Nocturnal film. The importance of nocturnes in what I’m writing. It could be beautiful, the color of night.
Meyerowitz telephones. He asks me if I have a car to take him to Marseille. I tell him that when I go there I take the train (I’ve never owned a car), then, in a soft voice, “Couldn’t you ask a friend for me?” That, in my opinion, is very beautiful. Biblical! M. adds, “Have you gotten the money?” (but I seem to be inventing a character).
December 4
Yesterday evening, Albert came back to talk to me about his love, his jealousy, and to ask my advice. This fellow seems decent and honest, completely without guile. He’s strong, and has the goodness and faithfulness of the strong. He detests lies. He’s sincerely distressed when I show him that despite everything, he’s obliged to lie at least twenty times a day. He brings me a bit of fluid for my lighter and some stones and he tells me that I have another present coming. He keeps me in suspense respectfully but as if with a child, because apparently this is the anniversary of the day when he first came to see me. And he gives a bag of tobacco.
Telegram: Audré Maurin, Élise’s first cousin, who has been in a concentration camp for three years for being a Communist, has
just been released and put under house arrest in Manosque. No doubt at his request because we’ve been helping him throughout with money and packages. He must believe that this is the Klondike. He’ll arrive Tuesday, three days from now.
I read in Froissart that the king of England presented the king of Cyprus with a ship that was docked at Sandwich, called The Catherine. That ship cost 12,000 francs. What could 12,000 francs buy you now: an overcoat on the black market or maybe even a ham!
December 4
Went out this evening to go to the post office. Coming back, it was raining, and I ran into Durieux who was leaving the mine. He stopped and asked me if I would be home tomorrow. “Yes.” “Then I’ll send René over (that’s his youngest son), he still has some books for you to sign (he came over just two weeks ago to have me sign four books). We would like to have all of them,” Durieux says, “My wife says that we must have them all. They still cost 300 francs.” I tell him, “I promised René that I’d give him one for Christmas.” “Ah!” says Durieux, “It’s Le Poids du ciel that I want, and Moby Dick. I want them all. I just read Précisions. I’ve read it three times.” “Send René tomorrow morning.” “Thank you.”
Nothing touches me more deeply. This is an honest-to-goodness miner. His oldest son went as far as the baccalauréat. René is a beautiful child, solid and serious, with the eyes of a doe and the mouth of a girl. Durieux is from up north, near Lille. Has been in Manosque for over twenty years. I come home feeling encouraged and responsible for doing what I do well.
December 6
Last night an alert at about eleven o’clock. Four or five breakins in just a few days here. Potatoes, perfume, and money were stolen from the houses. In Laragne, two masked men armed with machine guns robbed the tax collector at four o’clock in the afternoon. In Banon, four masked men held up the Apt-Banon bus and stole tobacco. At the same time, other masked men in Banon hijacked a tank truck carrying 1,000 liters of gasoline. The Wild West. Farms are being set on fire. Gradually, gangs like Cartouche’s are going to form that will abandon patriotism for profit, pure and simple. I’ve cleaned and loaded the small revolver. It can’t do much harm, but there it is. I’m going to ask Gaston for a larger caliber. In any case, simply with regard to drama, it’s all good material for Les Grands Chemins. The cloak-and-dagger novel of modern times. If I could only be Ponson de Terrail! Well, I’m going to try my best.
Yesterday read quickly (that’s the only way to read it) a volume from Hommes de bonne volonté by Jules Romains. Vorge contre Quinette. We sense there the fifty-year-old man, sexually exhausted and drooling impotently over his young secretary. Long-winded, petit-bourgeois, minor eroticism. I prefer the genuine eroticism of Malraux. He has balls. An annoying book, badly written, badly constructed if at all, meaningless. Sentences like this one: “Above reigned a corridor….” (A corridor that reigns!) Jules Romains must have read somewhere that Balzac wrote badly and he believed it. Also at the very beginning of the volume (second sentence) there’s this incredibly affected sentence that says the opposite of what it ought to say (“it was not without having to overcome some repugnance that he decided to purchase that smock the other day”). College student coolness. Skilled juggler who hides his blunders with cleverness. Total lack of simplicity, sincerity, truth. Oh yes, he ought to have taken lessons from Ponson de Terrail.
Ch. must leave for longer this time. The thing that seemed settled remains a danger. No more news from Meyerowitz. Since it’s impossible to imagine that he’s come to his senses, I have to think that maybe there’s a real crisis going on there as well. And what to do about it? Mme. Ernst just came by. She’s out of money to pay for her room. And I don’t have anymore either. And I owe 80,000 to the tax collector, and I don’t have a single penny of it. Final deadline is the end of the month. Henry was taken to the hospital. His foot looks bad. It might be the diabetes. This evening the Meysonniers arrived who are fleeing Toulon and we’re going to put them up in Mémé’s house. Tomorrow André Maurin arrives and we’re going to let him stay here if he comes without his family. He’ll take Charles’s place. But if he comes with his wife and child? Where will we put them? And how to look after them? Difficult to be the only one working to support everyone. If the plays had panned out, I could have.
I’m beginning to seriously resent Lucien Jacques. It’s so stupid. And I have nothing left but the deepest contempt for all those in the Contadour. Including Hélène. The phonies.
I didn’t need to worry, Meyerowitz telephoned while I was at the hospital where they took Henry to clean up his foot. M. worries only about money. He’s asking for money because he hired a cook!!! Yes, I’m telling the sad but absolute truth, he hired a cook. He’s having a piano brought by truck to Vachères. Élise told him that I’m going to Marseille tomorrow. So M. plays the part of the desperate man, or the pariah, in which he’s incomparable. But Élise is incomparable as well. I think she’s the one who scores the point. Good, but the score’s tied.
Henry was in a hospital ward, visibly suffering; they had operated on him an hour earlier without putting him to sleep. They still don’t know what to expect. Before finding him, I looked in the smaller ward where Lucien Jacques was three years ago. Five beds holding five waxy green bodies. Hot as an incubator. Smell of pus, fishy and hot. Standing, leaning against a table, breeches unbuttoned and gaping, a kind of pale cadaver is waiting, he tells me, for the nurse to tend him.
I hadn’t finished writing that before M. called for the second time. I was fairly sure that Élise’s resistance wouldn’t hold him for long (Élise who has no equal when it comes to protecting herself and me). I don’t answer the telephone. Aline answers and tells him I’m still at the hospital. I listen in. M. wants money (for the cook), and for me to get busy right away on Le Bout de la route, which he wants to make into an opera.
December 13
I took the seven o’clock train for Marseille. I happened to find a seat in the second class. It was terrible weather and I left the house in the dark, in the rain, so I had to use the flashlight for the shortcut by the canal. The whole compartment was talking about the attacks. Everyone wanted to have the best story. Each topped the last. If all those people had really been shot, there would be no one left in the county. Who can relate the most atrocious revenge by the Germans? claims to have the most heroic Robin Hoods in their forests? Who boasts of the greatest number of bastards killed in their area? Then two young women from Gap opened their bag and started attacking their provisions: sausage, roasted rabbit, fruit, cheese, wine straight from the bottle. After Pertuis, the one sitting across from me fell asleep, mouth half open, snoring, the most beautiful image of cretinism imaginable. In Marseille it was raining. It took us twenty minutes just to enter the station. Hôtel Astoria sent me to Hôtel de Paris. At noon I went to eat near La Plaine at the little place with the pregnant woman. She’s getting bigger and bigger. A good meal, then I went to my meeting. Immediately I could sense that there was serious disagreement. It dragged on until about seven o’clock. Not a good day. The next day I saw L. I had lunch and dinner at his house. In the afternoon, a film, Le Baron fantôme, Cocteau. Beautiful images. Literary text. Dialogue with all the same flaws as mine. Not to be imitated. But a better day. A little peace and quiet. I returned late by the last tram. They were nice to me at the hotel. In the morning they served me outstanding tea. A meeting that day at eleven o’clock with Gaston Pelous. I found him demoralized, tired, and anxious. He confessed to me that he just gets by one day to the next. He asked me if I couldn’t help him out. Yes, my old friend, there are tears in my eyes. That’s what we’re here for. Five thousand francs will be enough for him. With all my heart I’d like to do better. But I have almost nothing left. At three o’clock I went to the station to catch my train. The whole way home in the dark, I worked out the numbers and if I keep all my promises, 10,000 francs is all I’ll have left. And I must pay 60,000 in January. The next day I immediately sent G. P. the
5,000. Truly I can’t do more and this will cost me clothing and travel. I can’t leave Manosque again unless I can get a bit more of an advance. I have to finish Virgile as quickly as possible, and Deux cavaliers. On Saturday, Salomé brought me eleven letters from neighbors at Margotte who were ordered by the provisions office to deliver supplies of potatoes that they don’t have and can’t get. On Sunday I wrote a letter that I sent to the director of the R.G., the prefect, and the sub-prefect of Forcalquier.
I’m getting back to work. Two good pages yesterday, two good pages today. If only I could finish by Christmas. Wrote to Cocéa to ask her permission to publish Le Voyage en calèche, and wrote to Gallimard to ask him if he couldn’t give me an advance for this text. Frank note to Garganoff.
December 14
I went to the hospital to see Henry. He seems to be doing better. But yesterday he was still in terrible pain. Last evening Mme. M arrived from Toulon at the end of her strength. Had to give her Aline’s bed for now because Crébely is in my office and we can’t have her sleeping in the room that C. has to go through on the way in and out. Since Aline’s room is only separated from ours by a curtain in the doorway, at first I was very uncomfortable going to sleep, and then I didn’t sleep well because Mme. M. was snoring so loudly. Because she was so tired, no doubt.
I’m going to try to sell a manuscript. The one for Que ma joie demeure. Caby came from Nice to discuss it and I proposed it to the younger Gallimard.
Mme. Ernst came by in tears. She’s out of money to pay for her room. I gave her 400 francs. M. telephoned, he wants Le Bout de la route for an opera. He wants me to drop everything and work on his opera.
December 15
I’m rereading Gone with the Wind. The women are cardboard cutouts. How do they have children? With what and by doing what? Does Scarlett even have sex organs? Puppets. But the battle scenes around Atlanta are beautiful and alive. Wooden figures in the midst of all that life. Respectability. It makes you wish Scarlett would sleep with someone. A little passion, flesh, less wood, it gets annoying. Isn’t there a little room in Atlanta where Scarlett could undress and make love with someone? Let her finally, somehow, be truly joined by blood to someone who experiences her breasts, her thighs, and her moans when she makes love. Let her open her thighs for once and let a man lie between them. Then the book will come to life. She will come to life. Too many veils of modesty. And how free Margaret Mitchell is with wounds. There, she says, finally, there’s something I’m allowed to describe. So let her write War and Peace. But, as things stand, we must have Scarlett’s flesh. She doesn’t have the little Princess’s downy mustache, and with all her crinoline, she hasn’t managed to make her skirts balloon like Tolstoy’s heroine as she dances in the deserted hall, coming to life. Once that happens, Mme. Mitchell, we don’t need Tolstoy’s women to make love. But we must have that balloon.
